My Life in HTML

Sorry to be absent from these pages for the better part of a week. I’ve been deep in the heart of Webville, putting the final touches on my class project for my Introductory HTML & CSS course. It’s a full website, yes, it’s about terriers, and, of course, it features Oscar and Lucy. More about that later. First I want to get down some thoughts about my first foray into real live programming.

I took this summer term course just so I could have a little understanding of the mechanics of my blog. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s worth twice the price to buy a good theme ready-made — especially if it’s from the excellent Elegant Themes. Mine cost $29 and that was for a year’s subscription to the site. Which meant I had unlimited use of any of their themes and full 24/7 access to their tech support and user forums. Folks, this is the bargain of the century. And there was nothing I was going to learn in an abbreviated Intro to HTML course that was going to equip me, in any way, to match what they do. But it’s nice to have an idea what’s going on “under the hood”.

With those modest goals, I was little prepared for how much I was going to enjoy coding. This stuff is fun! It’s like learning a foreign language, but one with no idioms, no irregular verbs and only one tense. I also found it also requires a very Zen kind of mindset to do it that is very relaxing. You pre-plan your site, then each page very logically, mapping out the hierarchy, what should link to what and how the information should logically flow. Then each line of code is written very precisely, to rules that remain comfortably the same, stopping for validation at frequent points. Somehow it all felt very restful. Of course, REAL programmers may laugh at me and say it’s all a different ballgame when there is a deadline at stake.

Yes, my class project was a Terrier Website. Did you expect anything different?

Then there is CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, which is where the magic comes in. Your HTML or XHTML pages are like constructing the canvas, prepping it, and maybe doing preliminary line work in black and white.CSS is where you splash on the color and the texture. Basically, you link all your pages to a separate style sheet. On that sheet, you designate all the “design” elements of your pages: the fonts, the font and paragraph styles, the details of how lists and other elements will be handled. Then you load it up. And, if you’ve done it right, those styles “cascade” throughout your whole site. Every time you tweak a style, you can watch it apply through to every page.

It’s all incredibly satisfying. And makes me take a second look at the web programmers we used to affectionately call “the geeks” at the various jobs I had. We used to joke (with love, with love) about the stereotypical loner nature of web geeks. Say, that we had to keep them in a dark room and throw raw meat in to them every now and then. Now I’m wondering if they were locked in their offices or zoned out in their cubicles because they were just having too much fun.

Of course, with a nod to those hard-working programmers, I’d have to say, it might not be as fun if you were responsible for a large commercial site instead of programming a silly little six page site about your terriers. But speaking of a terrier site, here’s mine: A Terrier’s Guide to Life. It’s not fancy, but every line of it is hand-coded. Yes, you can use DreamWeaver and other code generators to automate so much of this for you. That would be the easy way. But it wouldn’t be the Code Cowboy Way.

Since the site is on a student server, I’m not sure how long they’ll let it stay up. I suppose I should migrate it to my own server host. But that’s probably not something I’m going to learn until this fall. When I take HTML & CSS II.

About The Author

Although I'd like to think of myself as a rootin', tootin', wine-makin' cowgirl, I currently only live in Sonoma part-time. Mostly I'm on freeways between San Jose and Sonoma. With two yapping terriers in crates behind me. We try to enjoy both places and points in between. Which will explain why my post subjects are all over the map.

10 Comments

Must admit that learning HTML is soothing. When I was recovering from the first of two spine operations whilst we still lived in Las Vegas. i could not do much else but use a lap top. So after getting my mind numbed playing stupid games for hours I tried learning to build web sites. Well to be exact I tried learning code, then building web sites. it was very soothing & rewarding, however plenty of time must be applied to code writing & being retired, recuperating or being paid is the best way to learn. Distractions are not a code writers best friend, any distraction can lead to many hours of work disappearing. Backing up your work is a habit you only forget about once…..

Good Raleigh. Because as you’ll notice, links to your dog blog are heavily featured.

KathyB
on August 11, 2010 at 6:14 PM

Coongratulations, Lisa, upon entering the world of code. Back when I worked at a university and had wonderful IT people at hand, the favorite routine to follow any request for tweaking or adding enhancements – “It’s just a couple lines of code.” And then an evil grin.

Many lunch parties thrown and food provided liberally. Happy to hear this endeavour is zenlike for you. But then you have an orderly and yet creative mind, judging by the wonders of your blog.

Code is good for you, especially after it finally works. (If I had a dime for every template line I had to rewrite – well, let’s see. I’m on version 14.832. Surely I’d have at least a hundred bucks by now.)